


Chrysalis

by QueenPotatos



Category: Free!
Genre: Day 1 : memories / flashback, M/M, RH week 2018, Visions, it's kinda poetic, or supposed to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 09:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17041103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenPotatos/pseuds/QueenPotatos
Summary: Every hardship they faced forced them to evolve into a better person. But what happens to the ones left behind?





	Chrysalis

**Author's Note:**

> Happy rinharu week ! Let's get it started !

### Remember me - Chrysalis

 

_Hey, will you remember me?_

It’s a voice before Haru can see him. The fancy scarf, the black coat, and the train that passes and separate them, Rin’s round face and sadness he barely manages to hide even with a smile. This Rin doesn’t move, and Haru doesn’t run to meet him this time they just stare at each other. Now that Haru is older he sees everything he had missed so many years ago. Would it have changed anything?

_Hey, will you remember me?_

That’s what this Rin, his eyes, are asking him, the Haru that is about to graduate. And Haru promises he will. As if he could forget anything about Rin.

Rin smiles, and Haru wakes up before the sun. Time to sink into his bath for an hour before the last day of high school. He hates to admit but as hard as he wants the day to be nothing special, Haru can’t get the idea out of his mind that this is the last time Makoto waits for him before walking to school, that this is the last time they will eat with Nagisa Rei and Gou, the last time they’ll see so many faces. Some things need to stop for other to start, but endings are always, somehow, somewhere, hinted with the bitterness of farewell. Rei says it’s more like a rebirth, that he’ll just leave his chrysalis and be a magnificent butterfly, and even if he knows things are only going the way he wants them to move, he realizes the moment before leaving it behind that he liked his chrysalis the way it was.

He turns to Rei and halts when he spots Rin, his young, sad self behind him. He will remember him. He’ll remember all the chrysalises they left behind.

Samezuka invites them to a surprise party. Haru has no idea of what awaits them, but since Rin will be there it’s not like he can’t go – he wants to, first of all, and he is quite sure it’s going to be worth it. Rin doesn’t prove him wrong once more. He who wanted to swim in a pool full on cherry blossoms…Haru smiles fondly at the memory.

_You won’t forget about me as well, nee- Nanase?_

A young Rin gives him a cheerful smile and look back at their elementary school’s pool, deprived of sakura petals. He doesn’t know why so suddenly, the Rins of his memories start talking to him.

“Hey, what are you smiling for?” Rin scowls. His arms are crossed on a floater. He sounds annoyed but his pout looks cute, so much Haru is tempted to confess he’s the cause of his stupid smile.

“I was remembering something.” He replies, elusive enough to piss Rin more, just enough to make him curious of him one last time before his new adventure. “That was a happy memory.”

“You should stay with us to make new ones instead of living in the past.” Rin’s words catch him off guard because of how right they sound at the moment. He’ll remember Rin later, now he wants to live him. He splashes water to his face and they start another unnecessary battle that ends up involving both teams, until they’re both too exhausted.

Haru is the last one to change, having spend too much time under the shower. When he closes his locker Rin is there, except he can’t really tell which one he is. This one is avoiding his gaze, has a black cap on his head and a frown on his face instead of his beaming smile. He’s still broken, like the Rin from the railroad crossing, it’s Rin before the relay.

Haru doesn’t know if he can hear him. Can he call him? Can he just say everything is going to be alright in the end?

_Haru, don’t forget about me either, got it?_

Some chrysalises are harder to look at. Some chrysalises are easier to leave behind, but they are all important, they are part of the bricks that build our walls.

“Never.” Haru tells him. Rin smirks, then leaves him behind.

When he comes back to the others Rin is waiting, his shoulders proud and smile wild, his gaze assured and legs steady, an irremovable determination; it’s so easy to forget it hasn’t always been the case, it’s easy to forget how hard Rin’s road had been until that day, everything he had overcome on his own, thanks to his friends and with his family.

Suddenly, there’s something inside his chest that burns when Haru looks at him. It’s the same feeling he got when he swam in Australia, it’s like his butterfly is opening his wings against his ribcage, as if a new him is about to be born the moment he’ll look away from Rin.

And in the blink of an eye he knows what he has become.

Instead of Rin though it’s his young self that stands in front of Haru. One of his eyebrows is arched and Haru remembers clearly the exact moment he made that face – the day Rin introduced himself to class after his transfer. He laughs, what would his young self think of what they have become?

Probably nothing good, but then, he would be so wrong about so many things.

“Haru? You’re okay?”

He can almost feel Rin’s hand aching to reach him, to touch his arm to make sure everything is alright yet not daring to because Rin is not, like he’s often seen, a rock of confidence. He’s full of small cracks and is trying to mend them with a rare determination. That’s what he loves so much about him, among all the other things that make Rin Rin.

When he comes back home Haru isn’t surprised to welcome two newcomers in his room.

There’s his old self from a couple of weeks ago after his fight with Makoto, lying on the bed, and his younger self, holding his knees against the bed, still wearing his duffle coat and white scarf after his fight with Rin.

He’s also full of cracks. He’d be a fool to ignore them even now that everything is alright.

“I won’t forget about you.” He whispers.

The Harus look at him with wide eyes, and then they disappear like dust wiped out by a gust of wind, without breathing a word.

Haru feels content, happier with himself after realizing this. He sits on the bed to lie down a bit, but before he does Rin appears in front of him. He has his white cap and his bag ready for Australia.

“Promise me you’ll call me, right? And write to me?” He says, trying to be cool but Haru feels the quivering in his voice. Is it all about Rin’s insecurities? Remember me, his heart shouts, notice me, swim with me, come with me, stay with me, be my friend, smile for me, hold on me, enter the same world as me-

Haru takes a step forward and takes his face into his hand before leaning in, kissing Rin with full lips. Rin freezes, his eyes wide opened until Haru releases him. He barely has time to touch the corner of his mouth that remembers the ghost of Haru’s lip on them before he starts to disappear as well, his body dissolving into sparkling cherry blossoms flying up to his ceiling before they vanish from his sight.

Haru wonders how much the real Rin can feel about what had happened. He wonders, because the next second, Rin calls him.

 

 

Haru is wandering in his old elementary school ward, just under the sakura tree. There are a couple of petals out already, but barely enough to be seen unless you’re not standing right under its branches. He has been waiting for some time now, and starts to wonder if it was, in hindsight, a good idea.

Eventually, as always, it’s when he’s about to leave that Rin appears.

He’s just like in his memories. Young, cheerful, a sunny boy with joy in his eyes. It’s the first Rin he’s met. The original one with the giant crack, and who mended Haru’s trivial ones despite that.

Young Rin smiles like he knows already what he is doing here, like he has made Haru wait on purpose.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, cocky. Haru finds him hilarious. How did he miss that?

“I wanted to meet you.”

And then, he kneels and hugs Rin so tightly the poor child can probably barely breathe.

“Thank you,” Haru tells him, “Thank you, for everything. Rin, whatever hardship you’ll face, remember that everything is going to be okay.”

Rin remains silent for a while before Haru hears him sob, only once, “Of course everything is going to be fine! You’ll swim with me, right?”

How can he say no to that innocent face?

 

They both disappear like dust, wiped away by a gust of wind, swirling with the cherry blossoms.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Can't wait to read all the fics and see all the arts for this session !  
> You can follow me on twitter (doctor_queenie) and tumblr (doctor-queenie) (yeah I know it's tricky it's not the same dash)


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